ST. VINCENT PM LASHES OUT OVER BARBADOS IMMIGRATION POLICY

UNCLAS BRIDGETOWN 000294 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PBTS XL SUBJECT: ST. VINCENT PM LASHES OUT OVER BARBADOS IMMIGRATION POLICY REF: BRIDGETOWN 293 ¶1. (U) St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves leveled unusually sharp criticism against a fellow CARICOM member at a speech to the St. Vincent parliament May 14. While stopping just short of calling out Barbados PM David Thompson by name, Gonsalves strongly castigated Barbados for a recently-announced tightening of its immigration policies (reftel). Accusing "some political leaders" of "stoking chauvinistic fires which are latent in our Caribbean societies," Gonsalves said the new policy might cause St. Vincent to consider withdrawing from the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). Gonsalves also complained more broadly about "malignant xenophobia" in the CARICOM space against Guyanese, Jamaicans, Vincentians, St. Lucians, and Grenadians. ¶2. (U) Asked for a reaction upon his return from Cuba that night, PM Thompson downplayed Gonsalves' outburst and said he hoped to address the PM's concerns face-to-face at an upcoming meeting of OECS leaders to which Barbados had been invited. In a dig at Gonsalves' outburst, Thompson noted it was not his practice to "shout across the Caribbean Sea" as a means of dialogue among Caribbean leaders. ¶3. (SBU) There is in fact a good deal of discrimination within the region, felt particularly by Guyanese communities. Barbados often sees itself as set apart from the rest of the Eastern Caribbean by virtue of its higher levels of development and its high per capita GDP (at around $19,000, among the highest levels in the hemisphere). This friction, coupled with CARICOM's bureaucratic inefficiency and turf competition between Barbados and Trinidad to be the CARICOM region's security hub, highlights the difficulties CARICOM faces in realizing its stated aim of closer integration. Barbados' new immigration policy, which has received mostly negative attention in the region so far, is both an example of the "haves" in the Caribbean being unwilling to integrate with the "have nots," and a further indication of the Thompson government's desire to "fence in" the economy to provide more opportunities for Barbadians. ¶4. (SBU) Meanwhile, should CSME atrophy as Gonsalves has indicated, there could be fresh impetus to move forward on closer integration within the smaller, more manageable OECS sub-regional grouping. Gonsalves has been a champion of OECS integration (which already has some strong roots with a common currency and central bank),and paired up last year with Trinidad PM Manning to entice OECS leaders to welcome Trinidad into the OECS fold (OECS leaders were cool to the idea, and it does not appear to have gone anywhere). Absent Trinidad, greater OECS political and economic integration could make sense - these islands are more similar in outlook and economic circumstance than is the case in the broader CARICOM community, where Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad, Guyana, and smaller countries like Dominica or St. Kitts often find common ground elusive. HARDT